The gathering place for Mental Health and
Applied Behavior Science Professionals. Become a charter member of Behavior OnLine. |
#41
|
|||
|
|||
Re: free will, determinism, and morality
maybe... we are both wrong:
http://www.ucl.ac.uk/~uctytho/dfwNichols.html :-) (you can get back to the main pages from there too. the paper is long, but well worth a read.) |
#42
|
|||
|
|||
Re: free will, determinism, and morality
Quote:
Nevertheless, I suspect that most of the civilized world will never truly buy into the half-ass notion that we humans are “ultimately†no more morally responsible than dogs; and —except in the case of children, animals, machines, and/or the truly insane—I suspect that most of the civilized world will continue to hold humans morally responsible for their behavior. |
#43
|
|||
|
|||
Re: free will, determinism, and morality
Quote:
Quote:
My view is at least coherent: no ultimate fault regardless of emotion. More evidence to me that I'm still right. People could understand the determinism of the situation but, when the loaded term 'morally responsible' is used (it's not clear if the questions themselves used this term literally, though) and/or innocent lives are ended, people still want to punish miscreants. As I've said all along: there is no free will but we must still deal with miscreants. |
#44
|
|||
|
|||
Re: free will, determinism, and morality
Quote:
Quote:
|
#45
|
|||
|
|||
Re: free will, determinism, and morality
Er...
What I found to be most interesting was their saying that there seems to be psychological evidence for the folk having two quite different conceptions of free will. Both of us were arguing on the assumption that free will is one kind of thing (that the folk have one conception of free will and that that conception is incoherant / contradictory). Seems that you were talking about one conception that people display in some settings... And I was talking about another conception that people display in some other settings... We were trying to argue that there is only one conception and so we were disagreeing about which aspects of the conception one should give up in order to make the conception coherent. But the article was focused on offering evidence for there being two quite different conceptions of free will. That the different conceptions arise from distinct psychological mechanisms. I'd still like to prescribe my usage... And you would still like to prescribe yours... But seems that the folk will continue on in their two different conceptions of freedom usage of the terms... So maybe we are both wrong that there is one conception. And maybe we are both right in that you are talking about one of the conceptions while I am talking about the other. Of course they are focused on DESCRIBING our conception of free will. They aren't focused on PRESCRIBING how we SHOULD apply / withold judgements of 'free vs not free'. We were worrying about the prescriptive side of things... But sometimes it is nice to observe before prescribing changes... |
#46
|
|||
|
|||
Re: free will, determinism, and morality
Alex:
Quote:
Today, the “known†laws/forces of the universe seem to be deterministic (except for the seeming randomness of the so-called “measurement problem†in QM), and so the currently known laws/forces don’t seem to provide us with a mathematical/scientific explanation or account of how free will could ever exist or ever have evolved. Ergo, the, unthinking, and narrow-minded materialists among us, Tom and MM for example, impulsively declare that free will and moral responsibility simply must be illusions, apparently b/c their own woefully limited understanding of the universe precludes such phenomena, in spite of overwhelming evidence that we humans do in fact experience such phenomena, at least to some extent. Perhaps it’s because Tom and MM themselves seem unable to learn from history that they somehow manage to project that as being a trait in all humans, and conclude that all humans must lack free will and moral, or any other kind of, responsibility. |
#47
|
|||
|
|||
Re: free will, determinism, and morality
Quote:
You admit there is no evidence for your POV, I show mine. I'm right, you're wrong. And usually your insults are much more backhanded than "unthinking, and narrow-minded". You're slipping. Last edited by TomJrzk; July 21st, 2006 at 09:20 AM.. |
#48
|
|||
|
|||
Re: free will, determinism, and morality
Quote:
I'm more interested in the science behind these concepts, not the concepts themselves. And people misunderstanding free will because they are under the illusion might add clues but it does not prove that free will exists. It's still all an illusion. Though a very useful one. |
#49
|
|||
|
|||
Re: free will, determinism, and morality
Alex, another observation—Tom says, “I have always said that I would accept evidence, and here you admit that there is none.â€
Interestingly, what Tom has unwittingly acknowledged is that, using his backwards “reasoning,†he would not have believed in the blackbody radiation ultraviolet catastrophe prior to 1900, although the evidence was overwhelming that the ultraviolet catastrophe was real and existed . . . so apparently Tom wouldn’t have believed it b/c the then known laws couldn’t explain it. Hello? Earth to Tom? You have things backwards. What Tom seems unable to grasp is that as the evidence is overwhelming that the universe and we humans do in fact exist, so too is the evidence overwhelming that we humans experience the phenomena of consciousness, free will, moral responsibility, at least to some extent, that such things do indeed exist; as so too was the evidence that the blackbody radiation ultraviolet catastrophe existed. For example, I can’t explain Tom’s unthinking knee-jerk responses to many things discussed in this forum, but that his unthinking knee-jerk responses do exist is, unfortunately, real and undeniable. |
#50
|
|||
|
|||
Re: free will, determinism, and morality
Quote:
Fear not, Fred, that your house of cards falls in the slightest breeze, for already it lies flat on the ground. No matter how much you're unwilling to understand. Last edited by TomJrzk; July 21st, 2006 at 12:29 PM.. |
Thread Tools | |
Display Modes | |
|
|